Migron Residents Change Name to Arabic Al-Majroon

"Official" name change ceremony held. Residents: If we were Arabs, we would not be treated this way.

By Gil Ronen & Yoni Kempinski

First Publish: 8/26/2012, 11:00 PM

Residents of Migron, the community that is about to be forcibly evicted despite the fact that 17 families there have legally purchased the land upon which their homes stand from Arab owners, protested their situation by Sunday by changing the name of their settlement.

Instead of the biblical name Migron, they made up an alternative, Arabic-sounding name – "Al Majroon." They even held an "official" ceremony marking the name change and put up signs with the Arabic name.

The logic behind the new name is simple: "If this had been an Arab village, anywhere else in the Land of Israel, this story would have ended differently. There was no need to evict the community when the land is privately owned by Jews," Migronite Shuki Set told Arutz Sheva. "We see that when Bedouins build on state land, they find solutions. So our solution is to turn into an Arab village."

Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Yaalon, said Sunday that residents of Migron who do not leave their homes willingly, and instead fight the eviction, risk homelessness. Yaalon argued that only families that cooperate with eviction should be allowed to use caravans in the Givat HaYekev site created to replace Migron homes, and where a new community for the residents is slated to be built..